printed gun

17 results back to index


pages: 246 words: 70,404

Come and Take It: The Gun Printer's Guide to Thinking Free by Cody Wilson

3D printing, 4chan, Aaron Swartz, active measures, Airbnb, airport security, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, assortative mating, bitcoin, Chelsea Manning, Cody Wilson, digital rights, disintermediation, DIY culture, Evgeny Morozov, fiat currency, Google Glasses, gun show loophole, jimmy wales, lifelogging, Mason jar, means of production, Menlo Park, Minecraft, national security letter, New Urbanism, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, printed gun, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Skype, Streisand effect, thinkpad, WikiLeaks, working poor

He told me a hobbyist had pointed him to public promotions Stratasys had done with the big names in gun manufacturing. “And do you know Abe Reichenthal?” Beckhusen asked me. “He’s a CEO.” “Uh, the guy from 3D Systems?” “Yes. He’s got this open letter in a trade magazine from August where he calls on everyone in the industry to stop people from printing guns. Did you know about it?” “I didn’t, but it makes perfect sense,” I said. “Look, I’ve been telling everyone since Indiegogo pulled us down that it was going to be this, quote, private sector that we’d have to overcome first. That Stratasys and these other guys act this way doesn’t surprise me.

The 3D printing world intersected with a group of self-identified “Makers,” modern successors of the backpage DIY culture, who loaded online comment sections and forums with the liturgy of their movement, which as far as I could tell was mostly about the rediscovery of the personal use of tools and industrial equipment. They otherwise preached a kind of democratic celebration, but when it came to the printed gun idea, I saw only a patchwork apologetics for Stratasys. Some went so far as to say that the printer repossession was in fact the movement’s will being done, that they had expected, even demanded Stratasys do it. The company best represented the Makers’ interests and was protecting their progress.

Yet he seemed to take a particular delight in a final question, a kind of wheedling mirth behind the words: “And say someone should kill you with your invention?” When it was posted, the piece itself drove the points home well enough. The 3D printing machines will be capable of reproducing themselves. No place in the federal budget for an ATF agent in every home. Kids printing guns while their blissfully unaware parents think their young ’uns are playing on the computer. A prohibitionist is quoted as calling the Internet a permanent “gun show loophole.” And as expected, the article reproduced one of the more provocative of my public statements. From the original Wiki Weapon video: What’s great about the Wiki Weapon is it only needs to be lethal once.


Free Money for All: A Basic Income Guarantee Solution for the Twenty-First Century by Mark Walker

3D printing, 8-hour work day, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, commoditize, confounding variable, driverless car, financial independence, full employment, guns versus butter model, happiness index / gross national happiness, industrial robot, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, laissez-faire capitalism, late capitalism, longitudinal study, market clearing, means of production, military-industrial complex, new economy, obamacare, off grid, off-the-grid, plutocrats, precariat, printed gun, profit motive, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, RFID, Rodney Brooks, Rosa Parks, science of happiness, Silicon Valley, surplus humans, The Future of Employment, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, universal basic income, warehouse robotics, working poor

“The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering,” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of Right (London: George Bell and Sons, 1896). 32. “USDA Economic Research Service—Detail,” accessed May 18, 2015, http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/detail. aspx?chartId=40094&ref=collection&embed=True. 33. Drexler, Nanosystems. 34. Andy Greenberg, “How 3-D Printed Guns Evolved Into Serious Weapons in Just One Year,” WIRED, May 15, 2014, http://www. wired.com/2014/05/3d-printed-guns/. 9 Concluding Unscientific Postscript 1. For some interesting thoughts on the political feasibility in the UK of a BIG at present, see Donald Hirsch, “Could a ‘Citizen’s Income’ Work?” (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2015), http://www.jrf.org. uk/sites/files/jrf/citizens-income-full.pdf. 2.

Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Green, Thomas Hill. Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Greenberg, Andy. “How 3-D Printed Guns Evolved Into Serious Weapons in Just One Year.” WIRED, May 15, 2014. http://www.wired. com/2014/05/3d-printed-guns/. Growing a Nation. “Historical Time Line,” 2005. http://www.agclassroom. org/gan/timeline/. Gruber, Jon, and Emmanuel Saez. “The Elasticity of Taxable Income: Evidence and Implications.” Journal of Public Economics 84, 1 (2002): 1–32. Haybron, D.


pages: 677 words: 206,548

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It by Marc Goodman

23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, Brian Krebs, business process, butterfly effect, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, cognitive dissonance, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, don't be evil, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, future of work, game design, gamification, global pandemic, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, Hacker News, high net worth, High speed trading, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, hypertext link, illegal immigration, impulse control, industrial robot, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, Large Hadron Collider, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, license plate recognition, lifelogging, litecoin, low earth orbit, M-Pesa, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mobile money, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, national security letter, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off grid, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, operational security, optical character recognition, Parag Khanna, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, personalized medicine, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, printed gun, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rodney Brooks, Ross Ulbricht, Russell Brand, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, security theater, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, Stuxnet, subscription business, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tech worker, technological singularity, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, uranium enrichment, Virgin Galactic, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wave and Pay, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, you are the product, zero day

,” Forbes, March 6, 2012. 82 The Gartner group: Gartner, “Gartner Says Uses of 3D Printing Will Ignite Major Debate on Ethics and Regulation,” Gartner.​com, Jan. 29, 2014. 83 Digital manufacturing will also be a boon: Drew Prindle, “KeyMe Joins Forces with Shapeways to Bring You Custom 3D-Printed Key Copies,” Digital Trends, Dec. 17, 2013. 84 There are apps too: Ann Givens and Chris Glorioso, “New Technology Could Let Thieves Copy Keys,” NBC New York, May 21, 2014. 85 In 2012, cops uncovered: Andy Greenberg, “Hacker Opens High Security Handcuffs with 3D-Printed and Laser-Cut Keys,” Forbes, July 16, 2012. 86 While the potential humanitarian benefits: Tim Adams, “The ‘Chemputer’ That Could Print Out Any Drug,” Guardian, July 21, 2012. 87 Wilson created the Wiki Weapon Project: Carole Cadwalladr, “Meet Cody Wilson, Creator of the 3D-Gun, Anarchist, Libertarian,” Guardian, Feb. 8, 2014. 88 The lower receiver: Andy Greenberg, “Here’s What It Looks Like to Fire a (Partly) 3D-Printed Gun,” Forbes, Dec. 3, 2012. 89 In May 2013: Andy Greenberg, “Meet the ‘Liberator’: Test-Firing the World’s First Fully 3D-Printed Gun,” Forbes, May 5, 2013. 90 Wilson’s efforts have left: Andy Greenberg, “How 3-D Printed Guns Evolved into Serious Weapons in Just One Year,” Wired, May 15, 2014. 316 These plastic firearms: Cheryl K. Chumley, “Israeli TV Crew Sneaks Printed 3-D Gun into Knesset—Twice,” Washington Times, July 4, 2013. 91 Other repositories: Greenberg, “How 3-D Printed Guns Evolved into Serious Weapons in Just One Year.” 92 The FBI’s Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center: Aliya Sternstein, “The FBI Is Getting Its Own, Personal 3D Printer for Studying Bombs,” Next gov, June 13, 2014.

Among his 3-D printed creations was a lower receiver for an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle from which he successfully fired six hundred rounds of ammunition. The lower receiver is the key part of the firearm and the only one regulated by law; the rest of the parts in many states can be obtained without background checks or even identification. In May 2013, Wilson also designed the Liberator, the world’s first fully 3-D-printed gun, designed to fire standard .380 handgun bullets, and 100,000 people around the world downloaded the drawings. When asked by the press how he felt about his accomplishment, Wilson replied that now “anywhere there’s a computer and an Internet connection, there would be the promise of a gun.” Wilson’s efforts have left Congress in the dust, which failed to pass introduced legislation prohibiting 3-D-printed weapons.

Wilson’s efforts have left Congress in the dust, which failed to pass introduced legislation prohibiting 3-D-printed weapons. These plastic firearms can be near impossible to detect on standard metal detectors, as a team of Israeli investigative reporters proved by smuggling a 3-D-printed gun into the highly secure Knesset building, twice. In the meantime, dozens of other digital gunsmiths have improved upon the original Liberator and even posted their own digital gun files online. Other repositories for online designs for 3-D weapons have been created, including those that have plans for hand grenades and mortar rounds.


pages: 296 words: 86,610

The Bitcoin Guidebook: How to Obtain, Invest, and Spend the World's First Decentralized Cryptocurrency by Ian Demartino

3D printing, AltaVista, altcoin, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, buy low sell high, capital controls, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, decentralized internet, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Firefox, forensic accounting, global village, GnuPG, Google Earth, Haight Ashbury, initial coin offering, Jacob Appelbaum, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, litecoin, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, Oculus Rift, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, printed gun, QR code, ransomware, Ross Ulbricht, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, Skype, smart contracts, Steven Levy, the medium is the message, underbanked, WikiLeaks, Zimmermann PGP

Ross Ulbricht: Was accused and convicted of being Dread Pirate Roberts; his case is under appeal. Roger Ver: Angel investor and Bitcoin evangelist; CEO of Memorydealers.com, one of the first sites to accept Bitcoin, and founder of the company Blockchain. Cody Wilson: Dark Wallet co-creator and 3D-printed gun designer. Craig Wright: A recent addition to the search for Satoshi Nakamoto. Wired magazine recently reported he was “probably” the creator of Bitcoin (or wanted the world to think he was). In May 2016, he attempted to prove that he had created Bitcoin by signing a message using an account associated with Satoshi Nakamoto.

One of the most promising technologies in this specific niche of the Bitcoin ecosystem was Darkwallet, but it seems development has halted on the project as the developers ran out of money, despite having raised a lot of it. It is not currently in a usable state. Co-invented by Cody Wilson, the creator of the 3D-printed gun, and Amir Taaki, the creator of Darkmarket, Darkwallet is a decentralized mixing service. Both of its inventors have anti-authoritarian, pro-individual freedom histories and politics. Nevertheless, their projects shouldn’t be considered as radical as they are often painted by the mainstream media.

The documentary Deep Web, directed by Alex Winter, opens with a quote from OpenBazaar developer Amir Taaki: “The fascists, they have resources, but we have imagination. We are making the tools to take back our sovereignty.”7 The same sort of philosophy was behind the Silk Road. It also continues to motivate Brian Hoffman’s OpenBazaar, Cody Wilson’s 3D-printed gun, Darkwallet, and a dozen other tools that scare the shit out of people who have devoted their whole lives to upholding the status quo. The Silk Road was an unregulated marketplace and a gathering place for like-minded individuals, many of whom were true believers in the philosophy described by Amir Taaki in the Deep Web documentary.


pages: 257 words: 64,285

The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport: Second Edition by David Levinson, Kevin Krizek

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bay Area Rapid Transit, big-box store, bike sharing, carbon tax, Chris Urmson, collaborative consumption, commoditize, congestion pricing, crowdsourcing, DARPA: Urban Challenge, dematerialisation, driverless car, Dutch auction, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ford Model T, Google Hangouts, high-speed rail, Induced demand, intermodal, invention of the printing press, jitney, John Markoff, labor-force participation, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, Lyft, means of production, megacity, Menlo Park, Network effects, Occam's razor, oil shock, place-making, pneumatic tube, post-work, printed gun, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, tacit knowledge, techno-determinism, technological singularity, Tesla Model S, the built environment, The future is already here, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, transaction costs, transportation-network company, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban renewal, women in the workforce, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Connnexion on 16th of December 2014, URL: http://en.forumviesmobiles.org/video/2012/12/11/3d-printing-towards-freightless-future-510 http://en.forumviesmobiles.org/video/2012/12/11/3d-printing-towards-freightless-future-510 152 Andy Greenberg (2014-05-14) How 3D Printed Guns Evolved into Serious Weapons in Just One Year. Wired http://www.wired.com/2014/05/3-D-printed-guns/ 153 DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; it is a unit of the Department of Defense, as driverless cars have obvious military application. 154 Carnegie Mellon teams took second and third place. The Gray Insurance Company from New Orleans and Oshkosh Trucks also completed the course. 155 Markoff, John (2010) Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic.


pages: 286 words: 86,480

Meantime: The Brilliant 'Unputdownable Crime Novel' From Frankie Boyle by Frankie Boyle

Big Tech, Large Hadron Collider, late capitalism, lateral thinking, printed gun, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, technoutopianism, Turing test, WikiLeaks

Grass, pills, uppers, downers. Loads of American prescription shit.’ Caroline was kind of a drug dealer, but it was really a hobby. Mainly, she managed bands to various degrees of failure with a joyous, misplaced optimism. Donnie was still talking. ‘She’s autistic, as you know, and she’s labelled everything exactly with a printing gun.’ He leaned on these last words heavily, as if they were a key detail. ‘I don’t see what her being autistic has got to do with anything.’ ‘I’m not judging. I think it’s good people open up more about their mental health now – it helps you know who to avoid … anyway, think about it. We do our own investigation.

There were packs of tramadol, light brain damage in a bullet-hard lozenge; and a sheet of acid, each tab marked with a burning peace flag. Donnie stopped and beamed at me, then threw into the middle of all the little boxes, packets and bottles something that made them all bounce up off the bed. It was a solid brick of cocaine, long and heavy. I knew this because it had the word ‘Cocaine’ written on it with a printing gun. ‘What the fuck? That’s a lot more than two grand’s worth of coke, Donnie, no?’ I’d never really had any interest in coke: experiencing life more intensely was sort of the opposite of what I wanted to do. ‘Yeah, I got the impression it was a closing-down sale – everything must go! We can resell it, and fund the investigation!’


pages: 87 words: 25,823

The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism by David Golumbia

3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alvin Toffler, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, Californian Ideology, Cody Wilson, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency peg, digital rights, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Extropian, fiat currency, Fractional reserve banking, George Gilder, Ian Bogost, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, litecoin, Marc Andreessen, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Mont Pelerin Society, new economy, obamacare, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, printed gun, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, Singularitarianism, smart contracts, Stewart Brand, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, Travis Kalanick, Vitalik Buterin, WikiLeaks

For thoughtful and critical overviews of blockchain technology viewed separately from Bitcoin, see DuPont and Maurer (2015) and Grimmelmann and Narayanan (2016). Typically hype-filled presentations include Naughton (2016), Swan (2015), and Tapscott and Tapscott (2016). 2. For background on Cody Wilson and his promotion of 3D-printed guns, see Silverman (2013). 3. Some of the few exceptions to this rule in scholarship—political analysis that acknowledges the parallels or connections between Bitcoin discourse and far-right political beliefs—include Maurer, Nelms, and Swartz (2013), Payne (2013), and Scott (2014). Robinson (2014) is the best introduction to the general system of beliefs found among Bitcoin promoters.


pages: 307 words: 92,165

Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing by Hod Lipson, Melba Kurman

3D printing, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, additive manufacturing, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, DIY culture, dumpster diving, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, factory automation, Free Software Foundation, game design, global supply chain, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, lifelogging, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, microcredit, Minecraft, Neal Stephenson, new economy, off grid, personalized medicine, planned obsolescence, printed gun, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, stem cell, Steve Jobs, technological singularity, TED Talk, the long tail, the market place

Charles Moore with Cassandra Phillips, Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain’s Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans (Avery, 2011). 10 Joris Peels, “3D printing vs Mass Production: Part IV More beautiful landfill.” i.materialise blog (June 29, 2011). http://i.materialise.com/blog/entry/3d-printing-vs-mass-production-part-iv-more-beautiful-landfill 11 American Chemistry Council, “2005 National Post-Consumer Plastics Bottle Recycling Report” (2005). Chapter 12 1 United States Secret Service. “Know Your Money.” http://www.secretservice.gov/money_technologies.shtml 2 Sebastian Anthony, “The world’s first 3D-printed gun.” ExtremeTech (July 26, 2012). http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133514-the-worlds-first-3d-printed-gun 3 Mark D. Symes, Philip J. Kitson, Jun Yan, Craig J. Richmond, Geoffrey J. T. Cooper, Richard W. Bowman, Turlif Vilbrandt, and Leroy Cronin, “Integrated 3D-printed reactionware for chemical synthesis and analysis.” Nature Chemistry, 4 (2012): 349-354. doi:10.1038/nchem.1313 4 Nikki Olson, “3D Printing Laboratories: The Age of DIY Designer Drugs Begins.”


pages: 326 words: 91,532

The Pay Off: How Changing the Way We Pay Changes Everything by Gottfried Leibbrandt, Natasha de Teran

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, call centre, cashless society, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, financial exclusion, global pandemic, global reserve currency, illegal immigration, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Irish bank strikes, Julian Assange, large denomination, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, M-Pesa, machine readable, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, move fast and break things, Network effects, Northern Rock, off grid, offshore financial centre, payday loans, post-industrial society, printed gun, QR code, RAND corporation, ransomware, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, Rishi Sunak, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart contracts, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, tech billionaire, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, WikiLeaks, you are the product

Again, the short answer is yes. The metaphors around monetary policy are unhelpful here. Many of the headlines used to describe the Covid-19 economic aid programme involved the printing of banknotes: the Fed was ‘firing up the printing press’, the European Central Bank (ECB) was ‘priming the money-printing gun’ or, for those of a more digital bent, the ‘Money Printer Go Brrr’ meme. Evocative, but misleading; just as ‘sending’ money isn’t what banks do to make payments, ‘printing’ isn’t the way that central banks create money. Paradoxically, printing banknotes and putting them into circulation through the banking system does not typically increase the money supply.

Salaries in Albania, drastic gap between the minimum and maximum pay (https://balkaneu.com/salaries-albania-drastic-gap-minimum-maximum-pay/) Data on cash usage in various countries from McKinsey: ‘Attacking the cost of cash’ (2018). www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/attacking-the-cost-of-cash For more on access to cash in Bristol, see: ‘Mapping the availability of cash – a case study of Bristol’s financial infrastructure’, University of Bristol, http://www.bris.ac.uk/geography/research/pfrc/themes/finexc/availability-of-cash/ Figures on cost of cash taken from: ‘Access to Cash Review’, final report (2019). www.accesstocash.org.uk/media/1087/final-report-final-web.pdf For the quotes on printing money, see: www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/upshot/coronavirus-fed-extraordinary-response.html; https://twitter.com/AsILayHodling/status/1241008225924845568; www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ecb-qe/ecb-primes-money-printing-gun-to-combat-coronavirus-idUSKBN21D0J4 For the story on Sweden’s cash decline and resistance, see www.spink.com/media/view?id=338; Kontant Upproret, ‘The cash uprising – the voice of cash in society’ (www.kontantupproret.se) Björn Eriksson was quoted in D. Crouch (2018). ‘Being cash-free puts us at risk of attack: Swedes turn against risk of cashlessness’, Guardian, 3 April (www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/being-cash-free-puts-us-at-risk-of-attack-swedes-turn-against-cashlessness) For the UK Chancellor’s 2020 announcement on access to cash, see: www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2020-documents/budget-2020 For Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria and the Fed’s response, see: www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/us/puerto-rico-shortages-cash.html; www.americanbanker.com/news/feds-emergency-cash-plan-swings-into-action-in-puerto-rico Chapter 7 For the story on BankAmericard and Joe Williams, see: Joe Nocera (1994).


pages: 198 words: 59,351

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning by Justin E. H. Smith

3D printing, Ada Lovelace, Adrian Hon, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic management, artificial general intelligence, Big Tech, Charles Babbage, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, dark matter, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, game design, gamification, global pandemic, GPT-3, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, Jacques de Vaucanson, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kuiper Belt, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, meme stock, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, passive income, Potemkin village, printed gun, QAnon, Ray Kurzweil, Republic of Letters, Silicon Valley, Skype, strong AI, technological determinism, theory of mind, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, Turing machine, Turing test, you are the product

And much less or much more mysteriously (depending on your philosophical commitments), when we pay bills online, when we issue such speech acts as promises or threats via Facebook or Twitter, when we tell our loved ones we love them over Skype or Zoom, we are bringing about real transformations in the world, in our financial situation, in our social standing, in our hearts. All of this is conducted through electrical pulses, but it is not all mere “simulation.” The remote-controlled vibrator or the 3D-printed gun are only further twists on a power we had already mastered and were already exercising, to effect world-changing action at a distance. Nor is it clear that the manner in which internet-mediated representations are delivered to us as users distinguishes this tool in any significant way from other scientific instruments that are sometimes thought to give us more immediate access to the thing we wish to observe.


pages: 233 words: 66,446

Bitcoin: The Future of Money? by Dominic Frisby

3D printing, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, capital controls, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, computer age, cryptocurrency, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, financial engineering, fixed income, friendly fire, game design, Hacker News, hype cycle, Isaac Newton, John Gilmore, Julian Assange, land value tax, litecoin, low interest rates, M-Pesa, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Occupy movement, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price stability, printed gun, QR code, quantitative easing, railway mania, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Snapchat, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Ted Nelson, too big to fail, transaction costs, Turing complete, Twitter Arab Spring, Virgin Galactic, Vitalik Buterin, War on Poverty, web application, WikiLeaks

When I first wrote this chapter I could find 17 different so-called ‘dark sites’, where you can buy drugs with bitcoins on the Tor network: Silk Road 2.0, Black Market Reloaded, Pandora Market, Agora Market, TorMarket, The Marketplace (the M of ‘Market’ is the McDonald’s M), the Three Hares Bazaar, the RoadSilk, White Rabbit Marketplace, Outlaw Market, Bungee Discreet Global Mailorder, Blue Sky, Modern Culture, Budster, Dutchy and Utopia. At Utopia I noticed you could also buy a guide to hacking ATMs, $100 of counterfeit dollars for $35 together with instructions on how to spend them, and ‘untraceable, 3D-printed guns’. At the point of final edit, there now seem to be 25 different sites. Meanwhile, of the above, Black Market Reloaded has shut down, TorMarket disappeared in a scam, as did Budster, Three Hares doesn’t seem to have ever actually operated, RoadSilk has renamed itself Pirate Market, White Rabbit I’m advised is currently a scam, and Utopia has been busted by Dutch police.


pages: 624 words: 180,416

For the Win by Cory Doctorow

anti-globalists, barriers to entry, book value, Burning Man, company town, creative destruction, double helix, Internet Archive, inventory management, lateral thinking, loose coupling, Maui Hawaii, microcredit, New Journalism, off-the-grid, planned obsolescence, Ponzi scheme, post-materialism, printed gun, random walk, reality distortion field, RFID, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, slashdot, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, supply-chain management, technoutopianism, time dilation, union organizing, wage slave, work culture

Normally it just renders people immobile, but one in a million has a reaction like this. It’s just bad luck that Hilda was one of them.” “She was gassed?” “They all were. There was a hell of a fight, as I understand it. It really looks like it was the cops’ fault. Someone told them that there were printed guns in the ride-location and they used extreme and disproportionate force.” “I see,” Perry said. His blood whooshed in his ears. Printed guns? No frigging way. Sure, ray-guns in some of the exhibits. But nothing that fired anything. He felt tears begin to stream down his face. The lawyer moved to his sofa and put her arm around his shoulders. “She’s going to be fine,” Candice said.


pages: 267 words: 82,580

The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett

3D printing, 4chan, bitcoin, blockchain, brain emulation, carbon footprint, Cody Wilson, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, degrowth, deindustrialization, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, eternal september, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Free Software Foundation, global village, Google Chrome, Great Leap Forward, Howard Rheingold, Internet of things, invention of writing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, Lewis Mumford, life extension, litecoin, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Mondo 2000, moral hazard, moral panic, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, pre–internet, printed gun, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Skype, slashdot, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, The Coming Technological Singularity, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, WikiLeaks, Zimmermann PGP

Digging around the Bitcoin protocols, he noticed it wasn’t quite as secure and anonymous as everyone thought. It was a brilliant invention, of course, but with a few additions could be made even more subversive. That’s when he came up with the idea of Dark Wallet. He moved to Calafou, brought in Pablo alongside Cody Wilson – the American crypto-anarchist who created the first 3D printed gun – and together they raised $50,000 in a month via the crowdfunding site Indiegogo. Although Amir’s technical know-how and experience are admired, his ideals and motivations have put him on the fringes of what has become an increasingly respectable Bitcoin community. Dark Wallet has pitted itself directly against organisations seeking to capitalise and control Bitcoin and its market.


pages: 361 words: 81,068

The Internet Is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, AltaVista, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, Bob Geldof, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, computer age, connected car, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, data science, David Brooks, decentralized internet, DeepMind, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Davies, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, frictionless, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gentrification, gig economy, global village, Google bus, Google Glasses, Hacker Ethic, happiness index / gross national happiness, holacracy, income inequality, index card, informal economy, information trail, Innovator's Dilemma, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, Kodak vs Instagram, Lean Startup, libertarian paternalism, lifelogging, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, nonsequential writing, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, Occupy movement, packet switching, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Patri Friedman, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer rental, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Potemkin village, power law, precariat, pre–internet, printed gun, Project Xanadu, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, San Francisco homelessness, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, the medium is the message, the new new thing, Thomas L Friedman, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, work culture , working poor, Y Combinator

Schneiderman, “Taming the Digital Wild West,” New York Times, April 22, 2014. 49 Carolyn Said, “S.F. Ballot Would Severely Limit Short-Term Rentals,” SFGate, April 29, 2014. 50 Cale Guthrie Weissman, “Working Families Party Joins the Anti-Airbnb Brigade,” Pando Daily, May 2, 2014. 51 Kevin Collier, “Philadelphia Jumps the Gun, Bans 3-D-Printed Guns,” Daily Dot, November 22, 2013. 52 John Sunyer, “No Comment?,” Financial Times, May 24, 2014. 53 Associated Press, “‘Revenge Porn’ Outlawed in California,” Guardian, October 1, 2013. 54 Pamela Druckerman, “The French Do Buy Books. Real Books,” New York Times, July 9, 2014. 55 Andrew Wallenstein, “Cable Operator Pitching TV Industry on Plan to Convert Illegal Downloads to Legal Transaction Opportunities,” Variety, August 5, 2013, variety.com/2013/digital/news/comcast-developing-anti-piracy-alternative-to-six-strikes-exclusive-1200572790. 56 “Recording Industry Welcomes Support by Payment Providers to Tackle Illegal Online Sale of Unlicensed Music,” International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, March 2, 2011, ifpi.org/content/section_news/20110302.html. 57 Bill Rosenblatt, “Ad Networks Adopt Notice-and-Takedown for Ads on Pirate Sites,” Copyright and Technology Blog, July 21, 2013, copyrightandtechnology.com/category/economics. 58 Victoria Espinel, “Coming Together to Combat Online Piracy and Counterfeiting,” Whitehouse.gov, July 15, 2013. 59 Kyle Alspach, “Steve Case: Silicon Valley Has Wrong Mindset for Next Internet Revolution,” Techflash, October 10, 2013. 60 Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs.


pages: 294 words: 81,850

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson

COVID-19, crowdsourcing, deepfake, messenger bag, printed gun

“You did say you were hoping it would be pan-cultural,” says Lydia. “But with the emphasis very much on performing arts.” Anders moves a bottle aside and reaches to the back of the cabinet. “Theater, music, poetry, dance—” Then he spins around, a small pistol in his hand. He fires it and it makes the loud, hollow thok noise printed guns usually make. Lydia shouts Look out to Madison, forgetting she can’t do that anymore, and throws herself aside, landing on the beanbag. Her headache comes roaring back. Anders is a poor shot and his bullet embeds somewhere in the shoe display: he swings his gun around and finds Lydia again, but she rolls aside and his second shot buries itself in the beanbag.


pages: 398 words: 105,032

Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve And/or Ruin Everything by Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alvin Roth, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, connected car, CRISPR, data science, disinformation, double helix, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Google Glasses, hydraulic fracturing, industrial robot, information asymmetry, ITER tokamak, Kickstarter, low earth orbit, market design, megaproject, megastructure, microbiome, moral hazard, multiplanetary species, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, personalized medicine, placebo effect, printed gun, Project Plowshare, QR code, Schrödinger's Cat, self-driving car, Skype, space junk, stem cell, synthetic biology, Tunguska event, Virgin Galactic

Whether it would be easy to detect Bucket-of-Stuff-type material is a tougher question. And most of the world is not secured anyway. In a programmable matter world, a lone actor might download a program to make explosives or automatic weapons. That said, 3D printing has already made this sort of thing a concern. Attempts to ban, for instance, 3D printed guns have failed. This is mostly because it’s more or less impossible to stop someone from doing what they want in their own home. Whether this ease of creation actually results in greater danger to society is yet to be seen. Oh, and speaking of danger to society—perhaps some of you are worried we’ll create programmable matter that self-replicates, propagates throughout the world, and destroys everything.


pages: 410 words: 119,823

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield

3D printing, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, bank run, barriers to entry, basic income, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, business intelligence, business process, Californian Ideology, call centre, cellular automata, centralized clearinghouse, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, circular economy, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, collective bargaining, combinatorial explosion, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, Conway's Game of Life, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, digital map, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, drone strike, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fiat currency, fulfillment center, gentrification, global supply chain, global village, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Herman Kahn, Ian Bogost, IBM and the Holocaust, industrial robot, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet of things, Jacob Silverman, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, job automation, jobs below the API, John Conway, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late capitalism, Leo Hollis, license plate recognition, lifelogging, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, megacity, megastructure, minimum viable product, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, natural language processing, Network effects, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, PalmPilot, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Pearl River Delta, performance metric, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, post scarcity, post-work, printed gun, proprietary trading, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, RFID, rolodex, Rutger Bregman, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, social intelligence, sorting algorithm, special economic zone, speech recognition, stakhanovite, statistical model, stem cell, technoutopianism, Tesla Model S, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Uber for X, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, When a measure becomes a target, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

“Many 3D Patents Are Expiring Soon,” 3D Printing Industry, December 29, 2013, 3dprintingindustry.com. 32.Josef Průša, “Open Hardware Meaning,” September 20, 2012, josefprusa.cz/open-hardware-meaning/. 33.Johan Söderberg, Hacking Capitalism: The Free and Open Source Software Movement, Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. 34.Manon Walquan, “Un clitoris imprimé en 3D, une première en France,” Makery, July 26, 2016, makery.info/2016/07/26/un-clitoris-imprime-en-3d-une-premiere-en-france/; Carrefour Numérique, “Les réalisations du FabLab: Clitoris,” July 27, 2016, carrefour-numerique.cite-sciences.fr/fablab/wiki/doku.php?id=projetspercent3Aclitoris#photos See also ufunk.net/en/tech/imprimer-un-clitoris-en-3d/. 35.Jacob Silverman, “A Gun, A Printer, An Ideology,” New Yorker, May 7, 2013; See also Defense Distributed, defdist.org. 36.Liat Clark, “Australian Police: Exploding 3D Printed Gun Will Kill You And Your Victim,” Wired, May 24, 2013. 37.Robert Beckhusen, “3-D Printer Company Seizes Machine From Desktop Gunsmith,” Wired, October 1, 2012. 38.Ghost Gunner, ghostgunner.net. 39.Ateneus de Fabricació. “Materialitzem idees cocreem el nostre entorn,” undated, ateneusdefabricacio.barcelona.cat/. 40.Pau Rodrîguez, “Un centre internacional de producció digital es converteix en Banc d’Aliments improvisat,” El Diario, August 20, 2013. 41.Richard Sennett, The Craftsman.


pages: 448 words: 117,325

Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World by Bruce Schneier

23andMe, 3D printing, air gap, algorithmic bias, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Brian Krebs, business process, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, cognitive bias, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Heinemeier Hansson, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fault tolerance, Firefox, Flash crash, George Akerlof, incognito mode, industrial robot, information asymmetry, information security, Internet of things, invention of radio, job automation, job satisfaction, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, license plate recognition, loose coupling, market design, medical malpractice, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, national security letter, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, NSO Group, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, printed gun, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, ransomware, real-name policy, Rodney Brooks, Ross Ulbricht, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart transportation, Snapchat, sparse data, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, The Market for Lemons, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, Uber for X, Unsafe at Any Speed, uranium enrichment, Valery Gerasimov, Wayback Machine, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero day

As we’ve learned from the experiences of the music and movie industries over the past two decades, we can’t stop people from making and playing unauthorized copies of digital files. More generally, a software system cannot be constrained, because the software used for constraining can be repurposed, rewritten, or revised. Just as it’s impossible to create a music player that refuses to play pirated music files, it’s impossible to create a 3D printer that refuses to print gun parts. Sure, it’s easy to prevent the average person from doing any of these things, but it’s impossible to stop an expert. And once that expert writes software to bypass whatever controls are in place, everyone else can do it, too. And this doesn’t take much time. Even the best DRM systems don’t last 24 hours.


pages: 457 words: 128,838

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, Apple Newton, bank run, banking crisis, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Bretton Woods, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital controls, carbon footprint, clean water, Cody Wilson, collaborative economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Columbine, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decentralized internet, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, Firefox, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, Glass-Steagall Act, hacker house, Hacker News, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, informal economy, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, Joi Ito, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, litecoin, Long Term Capital Management, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, new new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, payday loans, Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price stability, printed gun, profit motive, QR code, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, shareholder value, sharing economy, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart contracts, special drawing rights, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, Ted Nelson, The Great Moderation, the market place, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, Turing complete, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, underbanked, Vitalik Buterin, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, Y2K, zero-sum game, Zimmermann PGP

Dark Wallet was a response to that. Elsewhere, Wilson was quoted describing it as a way to “mock every attempt to sprinkle [bitcoin] with regulation,” and to say to government, “‘You’ve set yourself up to regulate bitcoin. Regulate this.’” Wilson, who’d previously made a name for himself by designing the first 3-D-printed gun, had no qualms, he said, about his project becoming a vehicle for money laundering, drug dealing, kiddie porn, or terrorism. His response: “Liberty is a dangerous thing.” This was hardly a way to take bitcoin into the mainstream, but that wasn’t his objective. If Dark Wallet achieved freedom for only those at the fringes of society, so be it.


pages: 488 words: 148,340

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

Apollo 13, back-to-the-land, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, dark matter, epigenetics, gravity well, Jevons paradox, Kim Stanley Robinson, mandelbrot fractal, microbiome, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, precautionary principle, printed gun, quantum entanglement, traveling salesman, Turing test

At this point, communication throughout the ship was still close to normal, by way of individual phones; but those arrested and confined were having their wristpads and other devices taken away or disabled electronically, so that they were losing the ability to discuss the situation among themselves. However, in the midst of all this, the first time one of the stayers armed with a printed gun actually fired it, trying to shoot a young man who had punched his way free of his captors and started running away, the gun itself exploded. The person who fired it lost most of his hand and had to have his arm tourniqueted before being carried to the nearest infirmary. Blood and severed fingers were scattered all over the tunnel between Nova Scotia and Olympia, leaving the people in that lock stunned at the sight.